Episode 512: Unusual Alliances, Part Two
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Kiera: Or we can figure out what she wants or what we can owe her that will make us more valuable on the outside of this door. So how do we get her back down here?
Another good point. Increasing our value alive can only be a good thing. It beats the hell out of the alternative.
Nika: I’m uncomfortable with the idea that we’re bargaining with our own freedom and we’d be screwing everyone else we leave here.
Kiera: We might be able to bargain for some other people. We don’t know.
Nika: (hard) As an example: I don’t like leaving a lady with a kid in here.
Kiera: I don’t like leaving a lady with a kid, either. But the argument we make may be good enough—what we need to do here is to find out what she wants.
Nika drags up a sigh.
Nika: It’s moot until we find that out, that’s true.
Kiera: It’s like any deal. Like when we’re selling a ship. ‘What do you want?’ What do you want from us that we’re willing to give you back? So we need to talk to her. Cuz it’s either that or we need to break out and shoot her on our way back out again and if you are in screaming pain for the rest of your life, I’m sorry, but … We’re gonna try not to do that. I’m trying to do it your way where people don’t die but talk. And that’s a thing I’m not accustomed to.
Joshua: I’m listening. I’m not going to argue with that.
Nika(to Kiera) You bargain all the time. What are you talkin’ about?
Kiera: (eyeroll) All right, fine. I do it a lot. I prefer to do it behind a gun.
Nika: And you tell lies, too. In fact, you bargain all the time. (mimes lips flapping with her fingers)
Kiera: Never did I say I told the truth. Never.
Nika: (fierce smile) That may work in our favor right now. I would really like to see that happen.
Kiera: (agreeing) I think we need to barter.
Joshua: So we’re in agreement that we wait?
Nika: At least we’re not going to start off with the hostilities.
Kiera: Right. I mean, if all else fails, bend over and seem like … not that we’ve given up, but we’ve accepted.
Nika: They are not going to believe that from us.
Kiera: I don’t know. Giving up and talking with them—
Nika: They are not going to believe that from us.
Joshua: I love her to death, but …
He doesn’t even have to say it. He just tips his head at Rina. Kiera’s not inclined to give up.
Kiera: I’ll sit on her.
Nika: And for Arden, it’s next to impossible to keep his mouth shut.
Arden: Heyyy ….
Kiera: We can just tape his mouth shut. Kiss him. It’ll keep him shut up for a while. We need you for bargaining.
Arden: I don’t know what we have to bargain with—
Nika: That’s just it. We don’t know.
Kiera: And we don’t know what she wants, either.
Joshua: Me.
Arden: But she has you already.
Joshua: Well there’s a difference between having me willingly and having me unwillingly. I’m not saying that we should necessarily be bargaining with that, but there is a difference. The fact that she has to put a lot of effort into keeping River under control, she would have to put a lot of effort in keeping me under control.
Kiera: So … any input Arden?
Arden thinks for a minute.
Arden: If this project was to use Readers for …
Nika: The same thing they’ve always used Readers for.
Arden: Well, getting specific secrets, right, about the Independents and it’s failed … but it’s a spin-off. Is it an Alliance spin-off or a private spin-off?
Nika: Maybe a kind of independent spin off.
Rina: It could have been an Alliance spin-off that got co-opted. Or it could have been a private spin-off that the Alliance took over. Or … ?
Nika: Joshua’s thought process here is correct in that anybody who’s anti-Alliance—
Joshua: But that doesn’t mean that—to be fair—it doesn’t actually mean that it’s actually an Alliance-run, Alliance-funded operation.
Arden: ANS might be pro-Alliance or anti-Alliance depending on who pays them.
Kiera: Yeah, so that’s why I’m wondering if it’s a business.
Kiera knows all about business and how to work it.
Joshua: We know what their goal is, we just don’t know—
Arden: I mean, just given what we’ve been through with you, the people who are behind your training and all that were pretty attached to you and the program.
Joshua: Yes.
Arden: I know Operatives are powerful and everything like that, but might that not be something she’d be worried about if she reported this was not working well?
Nika: You think they might kill her for failing?
Arden: Not that she failed. But for revealing that they failed. Or for possibly that she was going to reveal that they failed.
Now that’s a wrinkle in the landscape.
Arden: If you had a business that relied on private firms to get intelligence and then somebody high up in the government said that this isn’t working, that this is unreliable … ?
Joshua: Uh-huh.
Kiera: So basically we’re back to bartering. We got something she wants us to keep quiet about. That she doesn’t have control over them.
Arden: Now, that would be Kappa.
Kiera: Yeah.
Arden: The Operative would be the one who would want some other story that—
Kiera: That’s what I’m saying. The Operative would be very interested in our silence. We do have something to bargain with.
Arden: Yeah, but it has to be something more than our silence, though.
After all, if silence is all she wants, why are we still breathing? Dead men tell no tales.
Rina: Do you think we can pit Kappa against the Operative. Obviously this woman has bogarted her pet project away from her.
Arden: She seemed upset.
Kiera: Yeah, but how are we gonna get Kappa. She’s in the bathroom. Unless we get back out this door.
Rina: (eyeroll) We can crawl through the air vents again.
Arden managed to pick the door lock with tongue depressors and there’s still a whole bunch of them in here with us. Why not try it again? On sober reflection, we realize the opposition will have tested the door and fixed that oversight. So we’re back to defining our goals and our resources.
Joshua: So what are we doing here?
Kiera: We are leaving.
Nika: With the people that are being held against their will.
Kiera: Minimum goal, we walk out with the people we walked in with.
Arden: So who might have the power to let us go? Does Kappa have the power? Or does the Operative have the power?
Kiera: The Operative has the power.
Arden: But maybe Kappa has the power too. She had a dozen of her guards here. I don’t know how many Federal Marshals have come here with her …
Nika: Maybe it’s the Operative and a couple of Federal Marshals who are bodyguards for her and the rest of these people are Kappa’s.
Arden: Maybe we’re going in the wrong direction. Maybe we should befriend Kappa.
Kiera: Maybe. Of course, we started off badly.
Nika: No. Joshua started off badly.
Kiera: Yeah?
Nika: The rest of us haven’t spoken to her.
Actually we have, pretty much all of us, during her visit to our cell. And let us not forget, of all of us, she talked to Arden and Rina face-to-face first. Which led to both of them getting tasered or paralyzed before being thrown into the cell we’re currently standing in.
Kiera: Besides, if you said anything or not, she could pick up on it. (to Joshua) The problem is you’re gonna have to talk to her again.
Joshua: I can talk to her.
Nika: (off his look) Does she think of you as a failed project?
Joshua: I don’t know what she thinks of me. A piece to be used? She thinks I’m a—wait—The Operative or Kappa?
Kiera: Kappa.
Nika: Let’s keep on one person at a time.
Joshua: Kappa thinks I’m a ... (breathes a laugh) … If I had to hazard a guess, Kappa looks at me like I’m a broken toy, that can be fixed and put to use. But I will say that Kappa’s a product of the Academy too which means Kappa has the exact same flaws in relation of the Operative as I do and that River does.
Kiera: So she may be under more control than we’re thinking and she doesn’t like it either.
Joshua: That’s possible.
Nika: Now, there’s an angle we can exploit.
Kiera: I wonder if we can give her her freedom, too, with the idea that if she helps us get out we can help her, too. Not that I want to release that on the world, but …
Nika: Yeah, but it’s an angle to be exploited.
Joshua’s pained to hear this. Machiavelli … Joshua Drake … not a comfortable pairing. Even though is life and those of his crew are on the line, it’s not a comfortable thing for him to listen to the women discuss pitting one party against another, of using their wants and fears as leverage. Oh, he understands the necessity of it, but it doesn’t make it any easier to bear with the fact he may be forced to do something despicable emotionally and psychologically to get us out of here. He throws his hands in the air at Kiera’s comment about releasing Kappa into the world and says:
Joshua: We’ve already let Roskov free. Maybe that’s what we can give to the Operative. ‘By the way, you know there is somebody floating around who can control people’s minds? Do you want a last description and where we last saw him? Here, go at him!’
Rina: (tongue-in-cheek) He’s tall and big and cuddly, too.
Joshua: Technically I’d remember the phrases if I didn’t put myself in horrible pain while I’m at it.
Meaning the control phrases. And actually he doesn’t have a good memory of those phrases anyway.
Nika: I’m pretty sure that’s a safety mechanism.
Joshua: That’s really too bad. That was Icelandic.
It would have been a great way to put Kappa under our control before she could kill us.
Nika: So if our option is using Kappa, we’re trying to subvert her to get us all out—including her. The other way of going about this is to attempt to go to the Operative and to convince her we will do what she wants.
Rina: If we all know what she wanted us to do.
Nika: We don’t know what either of them want.
Kiera: That’s the thing of the deal—finding out their soft spots.
Rina: Yeah, and then gutting them.
Bloodthirsty, much?
Kiera: No. Gut later. Find their soft spots. Go in and give them what they want. Or at least make them think that they’ve got it.
Joshua: So what are our resources. Do we actually have some?
Rina: We have knowledge of the layout here.
We take a quick survey and run up a list. We have the layout sussed. We have nearly twenty people.
Nika: All of whom seem willing to fight as long as we’re not getting them into a position to get them all killed.
Kiera: I don’t think that was it. So long as we’re not hurting two people out of the party.
Joshua: Two Readers.
Nika: Two Readers. (nods)
Kiera: Can you contact River at all and tell her what’s going on? Is that something you can do?
Nika: You’ve already had contact with her. Can you do that?
Joshua: I don’t know. I don’t think it’s a … Look, we’re not radios.
Arden: If only Roskov were here … Imagine what it would be like if he were in control.
Kiera: I miss that tall drink of Russian water.
Joshua: See that’s the thing. Roskov’s the worst—
Nika: He was scary.
Joshua: I think about Roscov and think about mentioning him but I don’t think it’s a good idea.
Arden: Wow. Really. You have doubts about that?
Nika: Just a few.
Joshua: Just a few, yes.
Nika: Little tiny ones.
Wouldn’t anybody. Roscov’s like that Tolkien ring: the one mind to rule them all. Yikes.
Joshua: Okay, so what else do we have, folks? Do we have anything else at all? Love?
Rina: My two fists.
Joshua: (checking it off) Love.
Arden: That’s all we need.
Kiera: Really?
Arden: I’ve heard that love is all you need.
Kiera: Oh? Then love the door.
Rina: You go hump the doorknob and unlock it.
There’s a spate of laughter. We’re all under some pressure and the humor is much needed relief. Even so, Joshua keeps at the problem through the bantering that ensues.
Joshua: I’m thinking here and nobody is helping me out here. More resources?
Rina: My two fists.
Joshua: We’ve got that covered under ‘twenty people’.
Kiera: (sotto voce) Fists of death.
Nika: We have two ships.
Joshua: Well, we don’t have those in here.
Kiera: And in one of those we’ve left behind our beloved Irishman.
Nika: Now here’s a good question. We left someone back aboard. Beggar.
Kiera: I wonder why hadn’t he missed us yet?
Joshua: It hasn’t been that long.
Not too long, no. Maybe about three-quarters of a day. But it’s not like we took pains to hide our approach when we arrived.
Arden: They know we got here by ship, so it’s possible—
Nika: That they do know about him, yeah. And here’s another question. Does the Serenity crew still have somebody aboard.
Kiera: We have no idea.
Arden: Well, he said when they came here that they brought them in their own ship, here. That these people brought them in their ship here.
Joshua: As far as talking to River, the only thing I think might work and the problem with it is me broadcasting a full volume and hoping that she hears and broadcasts something back hoping that I hear, is that—
Rina: It’s not a secure channel. Anyone can listen in.
Joshua: That’s it. That’s the thing. That it’s not secure and we know that there is at least one more Reader in here that we would not like to be involved in our conversations.
Kiera: Have we decided that the Operative is a Reader?
Joshua: Not the Operative. Kappa.
Kiera: We might want Kappa to hear, cuz we want Kappa to come in and talk to us.
Joshua: It depends on what we’re talking about but I don’t even know if that works.
Rina: A mental maskirovka? (grins) I can get behind that.
Kiera:How are you guys useful again? No wonder this project’s failing.
Joshua: I did offer to be given up if you would prefer that. The Give-Up-Joshua routine.
Rina: No.
Nika: (eyeroll) Sure. Let’s give you up, Joshua.
Rina: No.
Kiera: (wicked grin) Yeah, if we really thought about how useful you were—
Nika: (catching on) We’d already be dead.
Kiera: Yeah. ‘We got the one that’s a dud. We keep whacking it and we can’t get any channels or anything. We can’t listen to good radio’.
Nika: ‘Every time I put my boot up his ass, something else goes wrong’.
Kiera: ‘Percussive maintenance has not worked on him’.
Joshua: For the sake of my sanity, I’d like to emphasize love. (points to his imaginary list) Like, several times. Just to remind myself.
You only tease the ones you love, right?
Joshua: No, seriously, do we have any secrets or anything that we’re willing to give up?
Kiera: He sees dead people.
Joshua: Secrets?
Nika: (laughing again) Dead people.
Joshua: Not the dead people part. The secrets part. Do we have any secrets that we’re willing to give up? Do we have anything?
Nika: We don’t have any secrets.
Joshua: That’s what I’m asking.
What we need is a clue by four. All this talk about Readers and broadcasting has some parallels to gambling. In that you put on a face that you want others to hear. It’s possible that somebody exerting sufficient self control might be able to present a face, story, a feeling that another Reader would pick up on, that the projector would be able to choose. Much like a good gambler. After all, if one wanted another to think he had a good hand, he’d ‘give it away’. In other words, he’d bluff. If someone wanted everyone to think he could have this base destroyed, killing everybody including the staff … well, that might spur some action. Mind, it may not be the sort of action we would want, but still.
Kiera: It might not be an action we want but it's something to bring up. If you could broadcast something not true … Can you lie?
Joshua: We don’t know—but how about one of you? Cuz she’s going to Read everybody. Or at least Read our negotiator, whoever our negotiator is. And if our negotiator can fake it …
Kiera: Question is--do you want me to do it or do you want to do it, Captain? I already know I can lie with a straight face.
Nika: Can you lie with a straight brain?
Kiera: Sure.
Joshua: Stick to the story.
Kiera: All you do is commit to it. It’s reality until it’s not. It’s just a commitment issue.
Arden: You don’t want her to be too obvious. You want her to think that you think that she doesn’t know what you think that she knows that you know.
Nika: (clutching head) Uhhnnn! My brain just exploded.
Kiera: No, I’d just be thinking the one easy-to-get message. Well, no. It’s just a matter of leaning against the wall and stretch and think that these buncha dingbats don’t know that no matter what we do, we’re all gonna die. They’re gonna blow this whole damn place up.
Joshua: A little more so.
Arden: But saying it …?
Kiera: No. I’m not going to be sayin’ it. Gonna broadcast it. Gonna look at everybody as if you’d lost it, sit back against the wall, and go we’re all gonna die.
Joshua: Wait until they get closer.
Kiera: They might be closer than you think they are. Cuz we kinda left a mess of the other two floors. And I just kinda think it doesn’t matter what we do, that’s gonna be it. Cuz we ain’t got nothin’. Just standin’ down here like hamsters in a hole. Just waitin’ for the snake to come.
Geez, Kiera. Can you make just a little more darker?
Arden: Thinking that now, it’s just your educated opinion. Which may not be the case.
Kiera: I am highly educated. I can make a pretty good guess. At least I hope I could.
Arden: But what would make it look like you’re in a position of knowledge that other people aren’t?
Nika: Joshua Read her. Joshua took it from her head.
Kiera: And now we know. And I’ll just keep thinking it a certainty that there’s nothing we can do. She’s already made up her mind. And Joshua pulled it.
Nika: That the program is bunk.
Kiera: And that they’re gonna destroy it and get rid of everybody.
Nika: And they’re just gonna blow it up.
Kiera: Get rid of the evidence.
Nika: Witnesses. Evidence. Staff. Everything.
Kiera: She and her guard. They’ve got that ship up there.
Joshua: I can pull that one off.
Rina: It’s a suitably Russian ending. I can get behind it.
Kiera: Well, no, I’m not saying it to you guys.
Um. Didn’t she just do that? Arden asks a question of Joshua.
Arden: Did you ever Read an Operative?
Joshua: Yeah. I Read Zelle.
Arden: What were the circumstances?
Joshua: Before Rick died. I Read her to … to be her and to …
Arden: Was she aware that you were Reading her?
Joshua: I … Well, she … She offered it up. Um, like … But was she aware that I was actually … like, I mean … ?
Joshua seems to be having a hard time pinning down the words.
Arden: You said she offered it up. She offered what up? She offered what to you?
Joshua: She … she basically … she knew I needed to be her or, you know, to play not her, but play a Blue Sun operative. And she basically … gave me permission to Read, so to speak. She—
Nika: So the Operative wanted you to know that she had no intention of negotiating?
Joshua: No, this is Zelle.
Arden: This was back on Colchester.
Nika: Oh.
Arden: I just wonder how easy they are to Read. If Kappa’s Read her, then she’d know the circumstances. But … if …
Nika: There has to be a permission factor if they’re trained to resist that or something?
Joshua: I’m reasonably certain they’re hard to Read. As Nika put it, they have training for that sort of thing.
Kiera: Okay, so we won’t know what the Operative’s gonna do til it’s too late.
Arden: But it also might make—unless Kappa thinks you’re a better Reader than her …
Nika: No, but part of that little trip might be that the Operative let Joshua see that she had no intention of negotiating with her. Something that would make it more believable to Kappa because she can’t Read the Operative either. So the only thing she would see out of the Operative is what the Operative chose to let her see.
Arden: And if Arden just asked were you able to, it’s like she could have let him read it, just to be mean. She does seem that way. Boy, you’re getting out.
Joshua: Hmnnnn….
Seems a bit of a convoluted plan.
Kiera: I can spin it into my thoughts that she let Joshua in that one time and she let him see that we’re in a Cat-and-Mouse game and we’re not gettin’ out.
Nika: Joshua’s holding out hope to us cuz he doesn’t want us to give up, though he knows for a fact that we’re not coming back.
Arden: But if you’re thinking that, that’s gonna make it a complicated thought. (a beat) I’m just sayin’.
Nika: No, you’re probably right.
Arden: ‘I’m thinking that Joshua is hiding from us that he knows that …’
Kiera: No, I’m basically thinking that he said—
And she shuts up and starts to think real hard:
Oh, I Read her before and oh, hell, it doesn’t matter. She’s radioing the ship and just basically making sure she’s clear and got what she wants out of it. That’s all this is, just making sure we’re sittin’ targets. She’s gonna make sure she’s out, her people are out, what she wants is out. Any evidence of a failure, gone. Kappa. Joshua. River. Us. Damn. Damn. Damn. This is a hell of a way to die. Not knowin when the gun is gonna hit us either. Damn. I had a gun and I shoulda shot her when I had the chance …
That’s some internal monologue Kiera’s spinning in her head. After about 30 minutes, we’ve got no way of knowing if Kiera’s thoughts are getting through the walls, much less attracting our target’s attention. Add the fact that there are twenty other people likely thinking away in close proximity and you’ve got one great big seething stew of resentful thoughts to sift through. We sit and wait for some sign because, hey, it’s not like we have anything else to do.
One of us is manning the window on the door and Kappa leaves the bathroom. She’s much more composed and pauses only to glance at our door once before passing out of sight. We wait. Nothing happens. Did she hear Kiera’s thoughts? There is no telling. We wait some more. Nothing continues to happen.
Joshua: So … Here we are.
More time passes. Joshua looks at the rest of us.
Joshua: So … Air ducts?
Kiera’s thinking: Man, if I could get to Kappa and just kill her, that would make it all worthwhile. Strangling the gǒu shǐ out of her would feel real good right now. If I had my hands around her neck as the ship blows us sky high, that would be mostly satisfying …
Nika: I wouldn’t mind getting out into the air ducts so we could at least talk to the other crew.
Joshua: I was just going to say.
Kiera: (from her corner) See if we can’t get Arden to pick the locks again. He has plenty of tongue depressors.
Rina: I remember we took to the air ducts to avoid the cameras. There should be an air duct in here we can get into and bypass the cameras altogether.
Kiera: Okay, mechanical schoolgirl.
Rina does her voodoo on the vent cover, popping the sucker free with only a little bit of skin off her knuckles and Nika goes wiggling into the ducts. She needs to get to the cell where Serenity’s crew is being held and it’s the room Sorren, Ben, and Emmett were held in. She crawls to the junction of the main duct with our room’s stub and instead of retracing our path from our previous trip, she turns right and goes the other way around the main room outside. Reckoning the vents follow the perimeter of the main room, she’ll be able to get to the other crew’s room without having to pass by the guards’ barracks room. Any means she can use to avoid being found by the guards would be a plus.
Of course, Nika is a tall woman and while she isn’t overweight or out of shape, there isn’t a lot of room to maneuver and it is still hard to sneak through the vents without making some small amount of noise. Belt buckles and jacket zippers scrape and hiss. Boot soles thud and squeak. Thanks to our thwarted escape attempt, she expects vigilance to be tighter and that might possibly include the security staff bending an ear upward toward the ducting. The confined space and nervous tension makes her sweat and by the time she reaches the corner and turns left toward the elevator corridor, Nika’s shirt is sticking to her ribs. She pushes on, however, determined to at least speak to Reynolds and his crew. There must be something they could cook up between them if they could just—
SHHHHHIIINKK!
With the silvery sound of metal slicing through metal, a blade abruptly splits the vent in two inches from Nika’s nose, bisecting it diagonally and barring her way. As Nika stares in surprise at freshly cut strands of her blonde hair fluttering before her eyes, she hears a calm voice utter from below:
Voice: Now, now. That’s not part of the deal.
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